places of design

So, my first assignment back at school was to take some pictures of a product/service/product+service as an exercise on observation. Pretty straightforward stuff – in fact, it’s stuff that probably comes as second nature now since I do this all the time in my day-to-day living. Anyways, I decided to do a little more than take some pictures. I only had one day, but I decided to make a simple map of an experience.

It just so happens that my mom ordered some Korean herbal medicine for me to give me strength as I start off my PhD. Something about Korean moms and their faith in oriental, herbal medicine – for those unfamiliar, this herbal medicine is basically able to treat all illnesses not treatable by Western medicine. I received the medicine two days ago and it seems like an interesting subject matter. There’s a product (in the narrow sense of the word) and a service – granted, the service has not be designed intentionally, but nonetheless, there is a service. Here’s my OOBE (out of box experience):

My Herbal Medicine OOBE

I ended up giving the experience a form with 4 major buckets: personalization, orientation, instruction, and conclusion. Very quickly, I realized that there was an experience before the arrival of the medicine. There were human interactions motivated by concern, care, and love. This is the moment when the herbalist diagnosed me over the phone. It was very personalized and depending on our conversation, the product would be made to fit my needs. Once the package arrived, there was a period of orientation, trying to figure out what this product is all about and trying to see if it’s legitimate. Once I got to the content, there were instructions on how and when to take the medicine, what foods to avoid, and a contact number in case there are any questions. There was also a moment of confusion because I had no idea what one of the contents was. Under the bucket of conclusion, there was resolution as the herbalist explained to me in detail what the unknown content was. The experience also ended on a high note as I connected with my mom in gratitude (human interaction) and felt self-actualized as I planted the used materials for renewal.

Three thoughts:

1. Although parts of the experience were not designed deliberately (at least I felt this way), the herbalist deliberately designed for trust. She added the deer antlers she used to make my medicine so that I could visually verify the contents that were used. This gesture overshadowed some of the other sub-par aspects of the service, such as the shady “unknown” telephone number, the poor coordination with FedEx on the herbalist’s part, the herbalist’s mother scolding me at one point because she thought it was my fault that the delivery was delayed (long story). One trustworthy gesture overpowers a series of failures (a.k.a. “service recovery”). How many other services could benefit from this? I’ve heard several Platinum rewards members from the hospitality industry tell me that all it would take is an “I’m sorry” from the hotel staff to make things right as opposed to getting more rewards points that they don’t really need. What is that one gesture in each service industry that can make or break the experience?
2. The climax of the experience was a simple phone call with my mom to thank her for giving me this herbal medicine as a gift. I just heard of yet another interaction design program being offered in the States – technology is, no doubt, a big player in the discipline of interaction design. So it’s easy to forget about the intimate, human interactions that have been a part of our world since the beginning of time. Sometimes I feel we try to design complicated solutions involving technology when a design is possible with something as simple as a phone call.
3. For the line describing the emotional engagement, I initially designed the baseline with the emotional intensities rising up from the baseline but then it felt very “Western” in thinking about design as emotional spikes. In the spirit of the Asian content and subject matter, I felt that emotional representation should actually go downwards from the baseline … kind of using the metaphor of roots and thinking about emotions as depth as opposed to peaks. Hmm. What a weird thought.